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Ford-Transit City hybrid plan in the works

Despite fears that Mayor Rob Ford’s focus on getting more subway into Scarborough will kill light-rail-based Transit City, signs point to a hybrid plan with at least the Eglinton Crosstown LRT surviving.

TTC chair Karen Stintz (pictured above) and Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig say they are working toward a plan with the city that should see results at the end of this month. (VINCE TALOTTA / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

Talks between the TTC and the province’s Metrolinx agency are proving fruitful enough that a compromise transit plan for Toronto should be ready by the end of January, both sides say.

And, despite fears that Mayor Rob Ford’s focus on getting more subway into Scarborough will kill light-rail-based Transit City, signs point to a hybrid plan with at least the Eglinton Crosstown LRT surviving, and Toronto paying a premium on the provincially funded expansion to get more of it underground and otherwise away from road traffic.

TTC and Metrolinx staff are communicating “daily,” said Metrolinx chief executive Bruce McCuaig, while the agencies’ leaders, and senior officials from Ford’s office, are to meet again before the end of next week, following a “very constructive” Dec. 17 session.

“I think we would like to bring (a revised plan) forward to both the Metrolinx board and the TTC as early as we can, and if we can do that before the end of January, then we’ll do our darndest to get there.”

In a separate interview, TTC chair Karen Stintz said: “It’s too premature to say we’ve arrived at a plan but we’re working toward that . . . There’s an expectation from the mayor that we’ll have something by the end of the month.”

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Neither would discuss specific transit options on the table.

However, McCuaig made it clear the province remains committed to the Eglinton Crosstown line, a cornerstone of Ontario’s first-phase, $8.15 billion Transit City plan that also includes Finch and Sheppard LRT lines and revitalization of the aging Scarborough RT.

The Crosstown “reaches across the entire city; it connects to the regional systems, the various GO lines, it ultimately connects into Pearson airport and into the Mississauga transitway,” McCuaig said.

“We have certainly communicated to the City of Toronto that Eglinton is the most important regional project in the ‘big four’ (lines) and that we are very committed to it. I think it would be fair to say the city acknowledges the importance of the project.”

Eleven kilometres of the line are to be underground, he added, so “it actually reflects the mayors’ interest as well in terms of getting transit off of roads and underground.”

Ford has said his top priority is extending the Sheppard subway with more subway, not an LRT, to connect it to Scarborough Town Centre, and he’s willing to put all other transit projects on hold to accomplish it.

Premier Dalton McGuinty and Metrolinx have told the city “it can be done,” Ford said last month.

McCuaig wouldn’t comment, except to repeat that peak ridership on the Sheppard LRT is forecast to be about 3,000 people per hour, well below the 15,000 per hour normally considered the minimum to support a subway.

He confirmed Monday that a bus-only road, like the part of the York University Busway that goes through the Finch hydro corridor, could be part of the plan.

A new Toronto transit plan, if it is ready, could be presented to Metrolinx board members at a Jan. 26 meeting. The TTC board is scheduled to meet next Feb. 2.

The boards could ask for changes, McCuaig said, with an eventually endorsed plan going to McGuinty and Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne “to make sure the province is entirely comfortable with what is being recommended and endorsed at that point.”

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